1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to Internet infrastructures, and more particularly to search engines.
2. Related Art
Search engines provide an added useful feature to the Internet by providing access to a wide variety of web pages, which would otherwise have had very limited access and use. Thus, the search ability of the Internet makes the Internet a very progressive and successful computer network worldwide. Many web sites (or web pages) often are totally unknown to the general user population and these sites having a very small potential (if any) to advertise. Yet, these web sites are potentially very informative and useful to the users, and users can gain quick access to these sites worldwide via various search engines. Thus, both the user population and web sites on the Internet benefit from the services provided by search engines.
Typical uses of the search engines include searching for information related to business, commercial, scientific, shopping, other professional and home needs. The purposes of using search engines may include shopping, seeking further information about professional needs (such as business and scientific needs), entertainment, downloading useful files, software, games, music, video streaming, etc.
Often these search engines have limitations in terms of providing adequate coverage or access to various web sites that are displayed and updated in a foreign language. The content of web pages that support only one or more foreign languages cannot be comprehended by foreign users when they visit a foreign land. For example, most search engines in local regions provide web links of web pages that are displayed or kept in the local language only. In addition, when traveling or foreign users seek information related to foreign lands, for tourism purposes for example, they often get web pages in local languages that they cannot read or use (if they get any meaningful web site search results at all by processing searches in a foreign language in a foreign locale).
For example when an American sales person, who speaks only English, visits Germany and searches for business related information for a sales related issue, the search engines that work locally in Germany often provide information only in the German language. Therefore, this German information that is provided is often unhelpful to the English-speaking user, and the sales person may not be able to conduct business successfully. In other circumstances, the search engines may provide web pages with some limited information provided in the English language, but these partial accommodations of foreign languages often lead to misinterpretations or slightly less reliance on the foreign language that may not satisfy the user's goals. Confusion may also occur if the English or foreign search terms are slang, difficult to translate or have multiple meanings in the local language(s) supported by the local Internet.
Some search engines provide translations of web pages, but these translations are not exact and do not provide clear information based on what was exactly written in the original language. The user often cannot search if there are no search terms entered in the local language in a local or new city. Also, the search-engine-provided translation services may not be available offline, when the user does not have access to the Internet. Therefore, a need exists to provide improve language support and international features to content and searches performed on the Internet.
These and other limitations and deficiencies associated with the related art may be more fully appreciated by those skilled in the art after comparing such related art with various aspects of the present invention as set forth herein with reference to the figures.